A 32-year-old man was arrested here for allegedly selling forged documents to help more than 50 persons migrate to Gulf countries, police said on Thursday.
Identifying the accused as Thomas D’Souza, police said he had been running the illegal business for the past two years. A crime investigation bureau team headed by inspector Venkatesh Prasanna, on Wednesday, raided the man’s office, Chinar Enterprises, in the city.
The raid yielded fake police clearance and grade test certificates, cheque books, passbooks of various financial institutions, LPG connection cards, passportsand other forged documents.
Police said D’Souza collected Rs90,000 from each of his clients. The police came to know about the illegal business after immigration officer KM Chandrashekar sent some fake documents to the superintendent of police, Dr AS Rao.
D’Souza allegedly issued fake education certificates in the name of Industrial Engineering Institute located near Mulky and Dadar in Mumbai.
The police clearance certificates he had sold were of superintendents of police in Kozhikode and Kasargod in Kerala,
Chennai and Visakhapatnam, besides Mangalore.
Persons seeking jobs as housemaids and other unskilled workers were his primary beneficiaries. His clients were mostly from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
“We have detected isolated cases of migrant workers going over to Gulf countries from Mangalore and Bengaluru International Airport in the past, but this is first time such a large-scale human trafficking case has been detected in the state,” an investigating officer said.
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